Cat People
by Michael and Margaret Korda, HarperCollins, 2005

My family recently adopted two young kittens. We’d not long ago lost a cat who had been a good and faithful pet for years, and these two new little ones were meant to replace him. We wanted more cats not necessarily because we have a special attachment to the species, but because we all love animals, because it’s nice to have non-human organisms around the house and because we think it’s important that our kids grow up with pets - we think it helps them to become compassionate and gentle. We wouldn’t describe our pets as our friends or even really as our family members, but we like cats, and we want them in our lives. I tell you all of this to explain what kind of cat person I am and why I didn’t much care for Cat People, the mostly inoffensive book-in-praise-of-cats by Michael and Margaret Korda. It’s not that the Kordas’ attitudes toward cats are, in themselves, off-putting; it’s more the way that the Kordas present themselves as people, perhaps inadvertently, that made my reaction to their book so unenthusiastic.

Let me explain further. This is a book for cat people, as the title would suggest. And by cat people, I mean people who really, really like cats. The kind of people who would be happy to look at pictures of someone else’s cats if the someone else happened to have pictures of his cats in his wallet. The kind of people who like to hear stories about cats just because they’re stories about cats. Not because they’re interesting stories, but just because they’re about cats. It’s that kind of book.

Michael Korda is editor-in-chief at Simon & Schuster, and his wife, Margaret, rides her horses around their estate in Dutchess County, New York. Both of them like cats, as well as horses, a lot, and they’ve published a couple of books about horses in addition to this book about cats. Cat People contains a few objective facts about cats, but mostly it consists of stories about the Kordas’ cats and the cats of their friends and acquaintances. It’s a chronological account of the serial cat collection of a very well-off, apparently childless couple, and if that sounds like interesting reading to you, you’ll probably like the book.

As far as the Kordas’ cats go, there are a bunch of them. There are those that they’ve adopted intentionally, like Queenie, the three-legged cat that charmed both the Kordas in spite of their reservations about her. Then there are the cats that have come into their household unintentionally, the cats who came into the house temporarily and then stayed; Margaret has, it seems, a tendency to stumble upon cats - sometimes she spots them while riding her horse around the estate - and before Michael knows what’s happening, the cats have become part of the family. Michael never admits how many cats he possesses - the number, apparently, is always changing. He suggests that a dozen cats is manageable, but those friends who harbor 40 or 50 felines are pushing the limits of good sense.

There is an unmistakable air of privilege around Cat People. Aside from the frequent and detailed references to the fine fabrics and upholstery that the cats destroy in the Korda home, much to the consternation of the couple’s interior designer, there is more than one story in the book about the trials and tribulations of transatlantic travel with cats in tow. Back in the day (pre-9/11), it was, I guess, not difficult for a New York socialite to demand to have her cat in her lap as she soared through the heavens, provided said cat had a makeshift litterbox into which he could make deposits during the flight. For those of us who can’t imagine being able to get edible food on an airplane, let alone being allowed to have a pet accompany us into the coach-class cabin, these stories come off as pretty remote and self-indulgent.

The story, though, that was the final straw for me was the story of Mrs. Bumble, a cat that Margaret found on the property, a plump and healthy stray who looked like good housecat material. Mrs. Bumble came inside, and she settled in well - until she bit Margaret. Twice. “[Michael] took her to the vet’s early the next morning,” Margaret writes. That was it; bite the mistress of the manor twice, and kiss this world goodbye. “There was no alternative, really,” says Margaret. No alternative to killing a cat who had been living happily on the vast Korda estate until she was lured inside by a promise of warmth and food. It never occurred to Margaret that she could simply open the front door and let Mrs. Bumble go back to the life that had left her plump and healthy.

A few years ago, I reviewed an independently published book called An American Redneck in Hong Kong. I criticized the book for being an uninteresting collection of stories about the author’s pets. Really, Michael Korda’s book is no different in content and only slightly more professionally written. Cat People, however, is the farthest thing from an independently published book; it is proudly rolled out by HarperCollins, one of the biggest publishers in the biz. That’s not surprising, given that it was written by one of the most powerful men in the New York publishing world, but that doesn’t make it a good book. If you have more than a dozen cats yourself - or if you’re a fan of because-I-can publishing - you might like Cat People. If not, you probably won’t.

Copyright 2006 Ad Media Inc.